You got a sense from some of the coverage of the Simpson/Bowles deficit commission report that their right-leaning prescription was exactly the kind of solution the corporate media could get behind. Charlie Rose could apparently only find two panelists who wished the commission had gone further with its spending cuts. On NBC‘s Meet the Press (11/14/10), the panel discussion featured former Fed chair (and Ayn Rand devotee) Alan Greenspan and far right former Republican politician Newt Gingrich. On the “other” side was Harold Ford, currently the chair of the right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council. A debate from the near-right to the […]

On Wednesday night’s broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (9/23/10), Gwen Ifill announced: “Now to the first of several conversations on whether or not to extend tax cuts that expire at the end of the year.” The first guest was Republican Glenn Hubbard, who Ifill told viewers “was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, and he helped to design those cuts.” Not surprisingly, he is a big supporter of extending the tax cuts, and gave the usual laundry list of reasons why, and criticized Obama for creating uncertainty in the markets and so on. […]

Yesterday the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ reports were released. This annual ritual often gives reporters a chance to exaggerate the long-term problems of the Social Security system. This year, the news was more or less what folks were expecting: By the trustees’ forecasting, Social Security’s trust fund will be depleted in 2037, while Medicare’s hospital fund will run out of money in 2017. Somehow, the Washington Post decided that Social Security was the real concern–its page-one story is headlined “Alarm Sounded on Social Security.” The lead rings the same bells: The financial health of the Social Security system has […]